The Journey
by Fabius Maximus
Summary: Set After the Pirate King. The Boss is leaving the Colonies, but someone is definitely following his fleet...
1. Chapter 1

_This is the second part of the Pirate King Series. Note that it also takes place in the same continuity as the Last Imperial Fleet and Exiles on the Wind. _

_Why wasn't I surprised?_ Todd wondered. The reaction to the news that a fleet, a _large_ fleet, had escaped had resulted in enough recriminations to make him wonder if he could get away with shooting everyone else in the command center. It'd give him some peace and quiet until they resurrected.

"First _Galactica, _then _Pegasus_ and now this?" A Three asked.

"Plus the other ships and ground units on the Colonies." A Five muttered.

"Why are you all fracking surprised?" Todd finally said. "Did you expect them to just roll over and die? Read the records of the first war. We caught them by surprise there as well." He gestured at Caprica. "That's an entire world and there are twelve more like it, not counting asteroids, secondary colonies and frak knows what else, and it's _hard_ to kill a world, much less twelve, especially since you want to live on them for the greater glory of God."

"Have you located them yet, brother?" A fellow One asked, in the 'adults are talking,' voice.

"No_." _Todd told him, "or at least not completely."

Finding a ship was hard— you could get a limited direction and distance reading off a jump, but those elements quickly degraded, making it useless after any more than an hour or so. Even when such a trace was made, it would often simply describe a sphere several light-seconds or even light minutes in diameter, and that meant flooding the space with raiders, who could try and catch the light speed evidence of an FTL emergence— the light, radiation and gravitic emissions. The raiders had managed to keep track of the fleet, sort of, but it was jumping fast enough that they hadn't been able to concentrate.

"I still think we should have attacked— our Raiders had nukes," a Six said.

"Not enough to kill them, and it would have alerted them to the fact they were being tracked…which I might add, Colonial tech isn't that great at. All it would have ensured is that they know we can follow them." Todd paused, "Ideally, they're trying to find some place to land and live— and if they do, we have them. Wait until the majority of their population is on the ground and kill them." He paused, "Of course, that's hard to do from here, so can I _please_ have my basestars and go?"

The others looked at each other and nodded.

"We've voted and agreed."

"Thank you for the glory of democracy. Next to the glory of religion one of the most wonderful inventions of humanity," Todd replied sarcastically as he left the room. On the way out, the other One stopped him.

"Some of the others are wondering about your determination."

"Really? Elder Brother?"

"He's with the _Galactica _fleet."

"Great. So at the very time we need someone to ride herd on that mob in there, he goes off chasing vengeance."

"It was very odd, all of the Five being on that fleet."

"If you want religion Brother, go talk to Six. You'll get an earful."

"That's not what I'm here to talk about…we are having some worries about you."

_We, meaning the other Ones, since we're the ones running the show, whatever anyone else thinks._

"Oh?"

"You voted against the attack."

"I did, because it was a bloody stupid idea, as even a blind man could see. Elder brother's obsession is his, not mine."

"That could be a dangerous attitude."

"Your saying people have been bringing up boxing?"

"I'm saying that it would be very wise if you were successful."

"I will be. I have to be. It's now a matter of our survival, because you can bet the survivors from _this_ attack aren't just going to find a world and sit on it, fat dumb and happy."

With that, Todd turned on his heel and headed for the heavy raider bay.

"Really, sibling rivalry must be terrible."

Todd didn't slow down. The last thing the others needed to hear about was him having aural and visual hallucinations. He'd considered committing suicide and seeing if it was a problem with this particular body, but that would be giving in to the same sort of illogical actions that plagued the others.

"Of course, it was a bit harder on the Colonials…"

_Not listening._

"I know. You do a very nice job of ignoring me…but can you ignore yourself…aren't you _proud?_ An entire species, driven to the brink of extinction."

"They're driving _me_ to the brink of extinction," Todd finally muttered, safely away from the others.

"I know. Well, I'll leave you alone…but just one question."

Todd stopped and glared at the hallucination. For some reason beyond sanity his brain insisted on making it look like Gaius Baltar, that self-absorbed and unwitting participant in his species' near murder.

"_What._"

"Just a simple question… you can tell me the answer later. What have the _cylons_ produced? Not warships or computer worms… things of innate value in and of themselves. If you do destroy all the humans…what do you have to offer the universe?" With that, the hallucination vanished.

"As if I have time to worry about that." Todd muttered and continued to his raider.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

_Fleet: 10 days after departure._

* * *

"Good news, we've managed to get all the KEW weapons on the battlestars operational." There was a pause and Doeg continued, "Bad news, we don't have the people to crew them."

"Vipers?" James asked.

"Lots," Tasmin said, "If you mean Viper _pilots_, just over 240."

"We're going to have to fix that." James said, looking around at the CIC of the battlestar Archeron.

The Archeron was as big, actually slightly larger than the _Pegasus _class. Designed at the end of the first war, the class had been intended to anchor _Jupiter _class battlegroups with a combination of larger flight group and more extensive weapons systems. In fact, unlike the later _Pegasus class_, the lower landing bays were actually smaller in order to allow the retractable pods to accept an impressive KEW and point defense battery.

And that was what had eventually killed it— the end of the war had ended the line of battle conflicts the Archeron had been designed for and while functional, it's lower bays were somewhat cramped, and in fact had been mostly used as a secondary landing bay for shuttles and other auxiliary craft, the external doors being used to pressurize the bays. The Archeron was still a powerful line of battle warship, but without any battles to engage in, the ships size and cost made it a simple decision to retire it in favor of the more advanced Pegasus class, which, due to it's more advanced systems, required a somewhat smaller crew.

_Which sort of explains this…_ James thought, looking over the vast CIC space. Limited function computer stations were set up in an almost stadium style, facing the main plotting boards. The Archeron and Athena between them probably needed more CIC personnel than a half dozen of the newer designs.

Which presented a problem.

"Okay, fastest rote training we can do…how soon can we put together a full crew."

"Months…"

"We have survivors from the other battlestars…" James pointed out.

"Problem is that if we scatter them all over, we ensure we don't have _any_ combat capable ships," Tasmin said. "Same goes for the cruisers."

James nodded. A crew couldn't be just commanded into being— it needed trust, to where each member knew that their crewmates w3ere doing what they needed to do. The cruisers, B_ig Stick_ and a few other ships were smaller than the eight battlestars, but arguably were more effective right now. A mob, even one made up of the most powerful warships ever forged by man, was no match for a trained force.

"So what do we do?"

"We've distributed the ship's crews of the civilian ships across the fleet and that gives us enough to sort of crew these ships." James said.

In fact, most of the civilian ships, save for the large ones which could not be abandoned, were currently riding in the hanger bays of the 18 transports. Some James intended to keep, while others would eventually be scavenged, but at least their crews were available.

_Go back to the Colonies?_ There had to be more people back there. Maybe even more trained soldiers. After all, they'd rescued nearly 1500 pilots and crewmen off the crippled ships on the Line, though sadly none above captain, a fact which James knew annoyed Tasmin greatly.

No. It was a catch 22. He couldn't risk the few effective warships to go back to the Colonies, yet they couldn't depend on the luck that had helped them escape and whatever the losses of the Cylons, they had far more ships than he had. If he _had_ the combat effective ships, he wouldn't need more crews.

No, at least for now, returning to the Colonies was out of the question.

"Any of the surviving crews have training experience?"

"Not many," Tasmin replied.

"Fine, first thing, we need to get a baseline of what everyone knows. I'll talk to the Dean, it's a test, he should be happy, but I want a data base on everyone in this fleet. If a 12 year old builds models of battlestars, we need to know." He paused, "Secondly, let's focus on the defensive equipment— if we stick to the point defense and AA batteries, that'll reduce our manning problems, right?"

"Yah."

"Okay, let's get started."

* * *

"What?" Carla said in a monotone as Terrence poked his head into her small cabin, noting the fact that her single dufflebag looked stuffed.

"Boss says you can do it, and we need you."

"Boss knows that _Rattletrap_ was the biggest ship I'd ever commanded right?"

"Yeah, but you were second officer on that bulk freighter."

"A _bulk freighter is not a battlestar!"_ Carla's howl echoed throughout the ship.

Terrence paused, and looked at his boss. Carla looked…depressed.

"It's a great promotion."

"It's desperation." Carla said. "Do you know what this means?"

"What?"

"There were no flag or command officers. We didn't save a fraking one."

Terrance didn't say anything about that. Once they'd gotten the fleet away, he'd been ordered to BSG27, the _Orpheus. _The Andromeda class gun/battlestar had looked almost pristine…but the inside…

Terrence shook his head, feeling bile rise again. The compartments that had been opened to vacuum were bad enough— it was plain that the group hadn't even had a chance to go to Action stations. But the sealed components— the centurions had made a quick run though the ship— in some cases, they'd just blown the doors, but in other cases, they'd actually pressurized the room and gone in and finished things hand to hand. Terrence didn't understand _why_ they had done it. The stories from the First Cylon war, as most were talking about it, were full of atrocities, but they more often than not had some logical reasoning— this was as if someone wanted to murder a few helpless Colonials and leave the others do die after they'd heard their friends die. Not only that, but the cylons had _removed_ a few bodies, mostly from the compartments they'd cut into.

Which was just weird, but Terrence figured he could deal with weird as long as he never had to see a blood covered compartment again.

"Well," he said, "I figure that you should be the big boss then—I mean, how old is-"

"No," Carla said. "That's final. And don't even bring it up."

"But-"

"_No."_ Carla frowned at her duffel bag and tried to pull the zipper closed. "Here's the thing. Colonel Tasmin is willing to overlook _Archeron _and _Athena. _After all, we found one and…er, technically refitted the other to be a monument. But these other ships— they're all _active duty_ battlestars. She isn't about to just hand them over, she can't. So they're under the command of Colonial officers."

"So declare you a Colonial officer. Problem solved."

"Problem not solved. Tasmin can't promote civilians."

"Well, she's going to have a hard time finding anyone to do it."

Carla sighed, and then finally got the duffel bag shut. "Look, here's the problem. We don't _want_ Tasmin to start ignoring the rules, for two reasons. Firstly, you'll notice that she has most of the ground soldiers— you know, the marines with the guns? The local defense forces, the 12,000 odd people that salute and ask 'how high' when she tells them to jump?"

"Yeah?"

"We really want her to not start talking about how you don't need laws when you have guys with guns."

Terrence fell silent. Pirates tended to be fairly democratic within their organization— you couldn't get very far with threats, not in the long-term and so even the Boss had to worry about opinion. Tasmin, at least right now..didn't.

"I see."

"Yeah. Here's the second thing. She knows that sooner or later one of us will probably have to take command, but this way, it's gradual, and she lets her own people know that they're still soldiers and that she's not ignoring the book. There are some procedures for long-term detached duty, but…" Carla paused. "When she does that, she really admits to everyone that the Colonies are gone, gone, gone."

"So you're gonna be playing second fiddle."

"Being that I've never even been on this battlestar's bridge before, for all of our sakes I hope so."

* * *

Lybock Bay Transport _Mount Hope_

_I do hope this works,_ Dean Markson thought. Some argued that it was too soon to start. They were fools. They would _never_ be safe again, and so there was no reason to postpone what would have to be done anyway. Behind him was a welding crew and his assistants— some of the students on the _Caprica_ had been studying engineering and ship systems…

_Which means I only have them for a short time. _There were simply too many things that needed to be done in the fleet to allow him to have even partially trained workers for any longer than absolutely needed.

"Normally, we would use tubes, but the available materials are limited, as are the production facilities." Markson had asked and in no uncertain terms had been informed that every bit of available fabrication capacity was going to getting the damaged battlestars fully operational. "We'll be putting in troughs here, and here," he indicated the plans he'd had drawn up yesterday. Theoretically, Dr. Lanis should be handling this, as she was an engineer, but she, and all the advanced students were currently involved in both physical and software based repairs. "The algae these troughs produce will allow us to feed the fish farms we'll be establishing in the other compartments.

"Aren't these a little small?" A female student asked. "The vehicle bays would be better."

"If we could be certain the ship would never be attacked, yes, but these rooms can be sealed off more easily. That eliminates the issue of a 'fraking flood' as the Colonel so elegantly put it."

"That's going to be labor intensive."

"We have unskilled labor, at least for now."

"Oh?"

"Why haven't you heard? Chores were invented to keep 12-year-olds out of trouble."

_And hopefully keep them from dwelling on the fact that everyone they know is likely dead._

Of course, there was one unintended benefit of going for the schools, which was most of the survivors had friends, siblings and teachers they knew. Markson shuddered to think about what things would have been like if they'd just had a random collection of people tossed together.


	3. Chapter 3

_The cylon__'s pursuit of the Colonials was rendered futile by one factor— space is infinite. Every jump, every day of flight, saw the volume the cylons had to search expand… and eventually expand beyond any hope of a successful search. But in a few cases, the refugees had another advantage based on _where_ they chose to hide._

_The Forging of the Modern Era. 120PF. _

"So, the cylons are tracking us." James said. "Anyone else know?"

"Not many. Morale is too thin, even among the military," Colonel Tasmin told him. "Getting our battlestars and other warships crewed and even partially combat capable needs people who are focusing on training, not when they're going to die."

"Wonderful." James frowned. "Our crewed ships won't be enough."

"No, but that's why we're jumping so fast," his father pointed out. "The DRADIS returns we've gotten show that only a few raiders are popping in, then leaving. They have to be spread thin."

"Yeah, but how long? We've got enough fuel now, but the moment we have to stop, you know as well as I do that they're going to collect all those raiders _and_ their base ships _and_ come and kill us."

"I have a suggestion that might assist us there," Mara Cline had been head of the astronomy department on the _Caprica_ and had been given the responsibility of trying to find resource bearing worlds, especially potential tylium sources.

"You do?"

"Yes. Our problem is that we cannot stop— as you've said, we would be caught and destroyed. We cannot settle on a world until we are certain that we have outrun the cylons not for a few months or even years, but _centuries_."

"Our ships ain't gonna last for centuries… especially if we have to keep running," Doeg growled. "All they have to do is knock over a few of our ships and we're on a fast spiral to nowhere."

"Agreed. We need to stop and yet we cannot stop at a planet."

"I-" James started but then fell silent as Mara continued.

"But we don't need to stop at a planet. If you'll take a look at the screen."

"Nice nebula."

"Far more than that, Mr. Kinkaid. That is the Sala Dwarf Cluster."

"And it is important to us why?"

"It might have had dozens, or hundreds of stars, but several million years ago we believe a neutron star passed through it and disrupted the formation process, leaving about two dozen brown dwarfs…and an absolutely huge cloud surrounding them— a cloud which includes literally millions of objects, some of them hundreds of kilometers in diameter."

"Okay, nice place-"

"Did I mention that it is believed that the radio emissions from the brown dwarfs and their interaction with the dust cloud makes effective long range DRADIS nearly impossible? That the characteristics of this cloud, which is about a light year in diameter, are quite similar in places to that found at the Ragnar Anchorage?"

Tasmin drew in a sharp breath. "How similar?"

"We do not know— similar enough to have the same effect on cylons? Maybe. But even if not, they would be nearly blind in this system and it has a vast number of places to hide…and live."

"Damn," James said as he flicked through the data. "No sign of tylium."

"They wouldn't be looking for it boss," Doeg said. "Nobody would be thinking of mining this far away. In any case, if we go and stop we cut our fuel usage way down."

"But navigating through there is going to be really hard…"

"An advantage," Cline said. "Yes, initially it will be hard for us, but we can always establish navigation beacons and calibrate our computers. The cylons would not be so lucky— and if worst comes to worst, they could not possibly patrol the entire perimeter, letting us jump out if we had to abandon the cloud."

James leaned back and tapped the desk.

_It__'s not as if we have a choice. We don't have enough firepower to stand and fight and in the long-term, not enough fuel or resources to just keep running with no objective. I'd hoped that the cylons would let us go…but no, there's luck and there's unreasonable luck._

"Get the ships ready. The last thing we want to do is let the toasters know what we're planning before we get there. This place is about 350 LY's from where we are, right?"

"Yes."

"Doeg, if we push it…"

"25 days boss. The new battlestars could go faster, but not the logistics and support ships and given our maintenance situation, I'd hate to push 'em."

"You're going to have to since we can't stop the cylons from following us. That means we need to reduce the jump interval as we get closer. The last four jumps need to happen as quickly as possible— preferably in about four hours or less."

Doeg muttered under his breath at that one.

"And when we get there?"

"We go in." James raised his hands. "I know, normally you want surveys but this isn't normal. We go in and the cylons either have to follow us and risk losing their raiders or hang around outside—and by the time they move all their forces up, we'll hopefully be deep inside— and if it does cause them electronic problems…"

"What if they're already there?" Doeg asked.

"Likely, we all die… but I don't think so," James said. Looking at the others he grinned. "Oh sure, it could be that they have a billion factories churning out trillions of centurions, in which case we're dead— but if so, why pull what they did? They didn't beat us to death— they sucker punched us. Clever, but also indicating that they may not outnumber us as much as we think."

"Well, if that's your order Boss, I'd better check out all the iffy FTLs." Doeg shook his head. "And we'll need to get anyone with mining experience to evaluate any resource points."

"Let's try and get there alive first."

* * *

Todd was not happy.

"So they've been pushing forward with two jumps a day? And now they just bumped it up to four? They know where they're going."

"They could just be panicked," Six said.

Todd counted to 10.

"No," he finally said. "If they were panicked they wouldn't have set a trap for us like they did the last time before they left the colonies. They would not have gone shopping for _seeds and books_. They're moving fast because they've detected our raiders, but they can't keep that up. So they're going somewhere."

"Our information is not very detailed about this region," A Three pointed out.

_No, because we were too busy preparing for war instead of looking around. _The Cylon "Empire," especially after the Ones had taken over, had become largely restricted to the Colony, a few other mobile sites, and a number of temporary construction and resource extraction areas. Pure research was very low on the list of priorities, which was biting them in the ass right now.

_So what are our friends looking for? Maybe I should start striking them now? Delay them?_

"What an excellent idea!" an unwelcome voice said enthusiastically. Todd look over to where Baltar or at least the hallucination that looked like Baltar was leaning against a bulkhead. "You can do it Todd! You can show the world the superiority of the cylon way of life."

"Hmph."

"What?" The Six asked.

"Nothing. Keep the recon going. No attacks. We find out where they're going first and if we're lucky, we'll find that they've decided to ground on a planet where we can end this."

"God wills it!" Six replied.

_I am growing to hate that._ Of course, the Ones _used_ the religious mania of the others…

"And used it well… but perhaps you should have sought to _curb_ it?" Baltar asked.

_But then they would ask questions, now wouldn__'t they?_ Todd looked over to where his personal demon was, but the figure was gone.

* * *

"_Gods_," James breathed.

They'd made the last jumps and now the glowing cloud filled the sky. Behind the fleet was the darkness of space, but here, there were vast clouds and banks of glowing matter. Occasionally a lightning bolt passed from cloud the cloud, the ionized gas showing its course.

"Fleet's ready to jump," Doeg said. "The raptors we sent in gave us a couple of decent destinations but I'm not…" He shook his head. "Boss, I really think we should take some time to-"

"DRADIS ALERT!" The sensor operator's voice stopped all activity. "Multiple-Four basestars, _many_ fighters. Inbound now, ETA 2 minutes."

"Start the jumps," James ordered. _Thank the Gods they waited. We__'re all spun up. If they had been able to hit us just after this last jump-_

_"_Launch fighters?" Tasmin asked.

"So we can lose 'em? No, we'll just have to take whatever they can throw."

The sensors showed the first ships jumping, the recovered battlestars, still too low on crew to do any good. Then the Lybock Bays and other support ships. By that time the first fringe of raiders were in range and the KEW weapons of _Big Stick_ the Archeron and the _Athena _reached out for them.

"No radiologicals on the first wave," the sensor operator said as the battlestar shook slightly from the first impacts.

_They probably were the raiders out tracking us. _

_"_Last of the fleet is away."

"Set the jump clock. Get us out of here." James gripped the edge of the CIC plotting console as the FTL drives started their jump sequences.

Moments later, the space was empty save for the frustrated cylon raiders milling about.

* * *

When the ship emerged it rocked, perceptibly rocked. James frowned.

"Told you boss," Doeg said. "The entire damned cloud is full of eddies." Looking up at the flickering DRADIS screen he muttered. "Doesn't look like we lost anyone though."

"Archeron Actual, this is Athena Actual," Tasmin's voice was barely understandable. "This is a hell of a soup you've dumped us in."

"Well, it's just as bad for the cylons," James replied.

"Hopefully. At least they don't know where we went for now, but we're going to have to find ourselves a bolt hole."

"We're sending the cutters out," James sighed. "They're going to have to make short jumps, but we should be able to find some asteroids that we can use."

"Better than just running blindly," Tasmin said. "If we're having this much trouble, I can imagine what the toasters are saying now…

* * *

_Three Weeks,_ Todd thought. _Three weeks, and we__'ve done nothing but lose fighters in that God cursed nebula._

They were standing around the central command post of the flagship, the hybrid giving of its usual mixture of status reports and nonsense.

"It's like Ragnar," he finally said. "Worse the further you go in, but there are eddies—" he called up an image of the nebula, color coded, with huge parts blinking red for "no data". "In some places our raiders can last a few days, and in some places— well they must be dying within minutes because they don't jump back out. Or just maybe, they're jumping into the crosshairs of that fleet."

"We'll have to survey the cloud." His personal trial, Six said. "God brought them here so they will stay, thinking they're safe. We have them cornered."

_Oh yes brother of mine, if we keep the other models focused on their make believe God, Everything will be just fine__…_

"That cloud is better than a light year in diameter, with fringes trailing off of the main body," Todd said. "It is nearly ten times as wide as the Cyrannus star system. It has _hundreds of millions _of objects floating in it, some of them the size of brown dwarfs, some of them merely the size of mountains, any one of which could be hiding our enemies. With the raiders we have, we could be spending _centuries_ surveying it, and that doesn't include the fact that the _FRAKKING NEBULA KILLS US!__" _The others backed off from Todd's roar. "And of course, unless we have a relay sitting right next to you, it also means there's no download. So be my guest Six, go forth and give up your immortality for God's greater glory. I'm certain He'll thank you."

"We can surround the nebula with sensor buoys," one of the more intelligent Threes pointed out. "It won't be a tight cordon, but it will give us warning if they try for a mass break out. For all we know, they don't have the equipment to make a long term stay in there."

"The people who appear to have large numbers of pirates among them, groups notorious for operating in the asteroid belt and halo." Todd pointed at the nebula. "No, they're going to stay in there. We have to go in and get them, and we don't even have decent maps. Hell there might even be habitable worlds in there."

"Unlikely. They would be young worlds, so life wouldn't have had a chance to develop," one cylon said.

"Unless the dear lords of Kobol were frakking around in there," Todd pointed out. "After all, it's not like 12 worlds with nearly identical ecologies are a natural phenomena, is it?"

"I do so enjoy watching these intellectually challenging meetings," Baltar said. "Or you could just let them go."

"And be boxed," Todd muttered. "No thanks."

"What was that?" a Five asked.

"Nothing," Todd replied. "Nothing that a lobotomy wouldn't fix," he said when he was certain nobody was listening to him.


End file.
